The draft law, which has largely passed unnoticed by domestic and international observers, promises to be yet another tool by which Turkey will be able to limit the rights of prisoners. It would effectively give the government the right to ban prisoners’ access to lawyers for up to six months. Needless to say, all of this is likely to further violate international agreements regarding the treatment of prisoners.

Turkey’s jailing of writers has received increasing attention in both the Turkish and the international press, enough to force Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to defend the fact that Turkey has more journalists in prison, describing them as “so-called journalists” who “ are actually “police murderers, sexual molesters and supporters of a coup”.